


Coming Home

by Kemmasandi



Series: The Pits [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe, Mechpreg, Other, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 08:25:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kemmasandi/pseuds/Kemmasandi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ratchet's reputation precedes him where it should really know better and Megatron's image as a tough-as-nails gladiator is under threat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> I asked for AU pairing prompts on tumblr the other day...
> 
>  **Anonymous** asked: _AU pairing prompt: where the war never happened and Ratchet is chock-full of MEGATRON's babbies!!_
> 
> AU where late in the Golden Age Ratchet was scapegoated after a scandal in the upper medical castes and stripped of his rank and clade, shipped down south and abandoned in Kaon, where his medical skill made him a much-coveted addition to the gladiatorial circuits and caught him the optics of a certain revolutionary. When Orion Pax became Prime, he in the process of rooting out corruption among the upper castes discovered what had happened to Ratchet, and pardoned him, which put him into direct contact with Megatron’s revolution and earned Megs an audience with the Prime of all Cybertron…
> 
> Thanks, anon - you may have spawned a monster.

Optimus saw him off at the lower boundary of the Cataract, where High Kaon merged seamlessly into the pits and foundries that made up the undercity. "Good luck, brother. I shall see you tomorrow."

The Prime’s optics twinkled with well-constrained mirth - he knew exactly what awaited Megatron back in his home district. He really should have accepted Optimus’ offer to make use of the Kaoni government offices’ medical facilities, but Ratchet had the optics of a hawk where injury was concerned, and in his current state he might well have taken it as a personal insult.  _Primus._

Just a short walk back to the principal pit, down into the dark and steaming depths of Kaon. Weak yellow light glimmered off the curves of Megatron’s armor, the evil red glow of smelting pits reaching up through vents in the lane surface. It was an ironic conundrum that one of the two most powerful mecha on Cybertron was not permitted to make his home somewhere less… _seething_ , but Megatron had made his name as a champion of the nameless and to move away where so many still could not would be seen as a betrayal by all the mecha who had supported him.

There was a short stairwell leading up half a floor into the basement of an ancient tower block. He ascended six floors, habitually overstepping the odd visibly-rusted step. Someone had put their pede through one of those the other day; he vaguely remembered Ratchet grumbling about shoddy maintenance and younglings who hadn’t learned a healthy mistrust of their environment yet.

The apartment doors had a lock code, but the locking mechanisms themselves had stuck ages ago. It wasn’t as if many here had anything of value to steal, in any case. Megatron pushed the door to his own ajar, peeking through the aperture.

The room beyond was very nearly empty, the sleeping mat bundled in the corner and the old datapads beside it familiar. Ratchet sat against the far wall, wrapped in a heavy thermoblanket and nursing a cube of energon so thickly processed it glooped rather than sloshed within the plasglas as Ratchet gave it an idle swirl.

The apartment light flickered. Megatron stepped inside.

Ratchet looked up, gave Megatron a quick once-over. His optics narrowed to a malignant stare. 

"I thought you were meeting with the Prime, not having a scrap with those dregs of society up there." He pushed himself to his pedes, optics fixed on the slowly-leaking gash on Megatron’s side. He’d never forgiven the upper classes for what they’d done to him. The Primal pardon had done a great deal to soothe his wounded pride, but above and beyond that Ratchet had a sense of fairness to rival Megatron’s own, and until it could be satisfied then there was very little that could keep the poison from his glossa when he spoke of the ruling castes. "I was under the impression that you’d promised me today would be  _restful_.”

"And it was," Megatron replied, lifting his servos placatingly. "After a productive shift spent wrangling legal matters I offered to teach the Prime how to use those weapons of his. I simply underestimated the speed with which he would learn."

"Glitch," Ratchet said, but the words were edged with the affection he would never give voice to. He plucked from subspace a pair of pliers and a clamp, held onto them with one hand while the other urged Megatron to the floor.

He sat, gladly after a day of exertion, pulling the medic into his lap. Ratchet’s swollen chassis brushed against his own, the heat of gestation venting hard from beneath his plating.

Twins. Bad luck, or so Kaoni tradition held. Split-spark, which was a little more auspicious than simulcast, but not by much. Fortunately, Megatron had never held much stock in superstition. Ratchet, for all his pessimism and cursing, was much the same.

Megatron lifted his arm out of the way and Ratchet set to work, barely pausing to give him a beady look when he looped both arms around the medic’s shoulders. 

It had been a good day.


End file.
